What Are Little Boys Made Of?

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

David Benkof: Behind the Mask

At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.

“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber

The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.

Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?

The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Review: The Gay Report

When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.

HIV Infected Humans Much Earlier Than Thought

Jim Burroway

June 28th, 2008

HIV-1, the prevalent strain of Human Immunodeficiency Virus infecting people around the world was first thought to have entered the human bloodstream at around 1931. Now a second human tissue sample stored at a hospital in Kinshasa in 1960 has pushed the date back more than two decades:

Marlea Gemme… analyzed HIV-1 genetic material obtained from lymph tissue collected in 1960 from the University of Kinshasa pathology department in the Democratic Republic of the Congo–only the second HIV sequence predating 1976 deciphered to date. Thus far, she has sequenced about 1000 DNA bases, which she has compared with the previously reported sequence of HIV-1 extracted from a frozen blood sample from 1959. Since it entered into humans, HIV-1 has been evolving into different substrains–but the 1960 and 1959 sequences were much more divergent than expected, Gemmel reported at the meeting. “It reflects a long past of diversification before 1960,” she said.

By comparing the two sequences with more recent ones, Gemmel was able to show that HIV-1 first entered humans about 1908, not 1931, as earlier analyses with just the 1959 sample found. Her analysis also indicates that the virus existed in low levels in humans until the middle of the 20th century. “That matches the rise of population centers,” Gemmel explained, suggesting that urbanization around that time paved the way for the AIDS epidemic.

There is increasing evidence that AIDS has existed in some very remote parts of Africa for several decades before exploding in Kinshasa and other large cities in the 1970s and in Europe and America in the early 1980s. You can read more about the history of AIDS in our report, Opportunistic Infection, which we will now have to update to include these latest findings.

Comments

Everyone who lives cognisant in the time between 1980 and 1990 knows, that the origin of AIDS is about 1979. The first description of the symptons e.g. has been published in the German journal “DER SPIEGEL” in 22/1982 page 187 as Kaposi desease under the titel
“Horror from yonder”
The question in this article is, why now? Homosexuality exists since living memory?

From scientific point of view it is evident, that AIDS is a pandemic disease. The spreading factor has been always greater then 1. All political and medical efforts never stopped the spreading. It has only been possible to slow down.
I is not possible for this kind of diseases to survive over 50 years in remote areas in Africa and than start his career in 1980 in San Francisco.

If you spread such disinformations, than you heave to give all your references to check this informations. To tell a story is easy, but to verify it is a hard job.

Jim Burroway

I’m afraid you’ve missed the whole story, Raimund. AIDS did not start in SF in 1979. No scientist studying the disease has ever put forward such a ridiculous notion.

And your citation of DER SPIEGEL in 1982 as thge “first description of the symptoms” is wrong as well. The first was released in July 5, 1981 by the CDC.

In fact, if you dig a little deeper, scientists have reported how it is possible for diseases like this to survive over 50 years in remote areas — unurbanized areas with little movement between villages — almost indefinitely. It was urbanization, wars, and the opening of travel which allowed the disease to reach it’s current pandemic status.

Yes, it is a hard story to tell, one that DER SPIEGEL was not able to tell in 1982. I suggest you rely on more recent sources.

You are right: to say the starting point was San Francisco is wrong, even New York may be an aspirant for this award. But all publications in this time identify America as origin.

I wrote “e.g.” the first description done by DER SPIEGEL has been in 1982.
If you study other journals annual indexes you will find similar results.

I have been several times in Africa starting from 1970. During this time it was common (by the Hippies) to find any place away from civilization. Only in Papua New Guinea, Borneo and Amazon exists in this time people without contact to western civilization. But even they was traveling for bargain greatest distances, doing so since all the time during human live on earth. See:
Bronislaw Malinowski,
Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
Written in 1917.

The final story in DER SPIEGEL:
In Europe experts awaits since months the first Kaposi affection in the homo sexual milieu. But the epidemic takes up so much time, that many assumes that this is a typical american disease, reserved only for the New World.

Even like siphilis imported from America, this hope was a fallacy:
In Barcelona and Kopenhagen the first affections are registered. The spanish man lived 3 month in New York and also the danish affections seems to be related to man´s love.
The next affections are awaited in the megalopolis of homosexuality: Athena, Rom, London and Berlin.

Raimund

Timothy Kincaid

You personal anecdotes do not dissuade us from believing the reports of epidemiologists.

While you may very much wish to believe that HIV originated in the United States in the 1980’s, all reputable scientific study has led the medical community to conclusions that differ greatly from your assertions.

If you have some unique evidence that HIV did not exist prior to 1980 and originated in New York, I’m sure that those who work daily to fight this disease would be interested. But otherwise the best evidence shows that HIV originated in Africa where it mutated from a much older strain of SIV.

Our comments policy requires substantiation. All you’ve provided is some general magazine articles from 1982.

The state of knowledge has moved significantly since then. (The HIV virus hadn’t even been discovered yet when this Der Spiegel article appeared.) But now the medical literature is full of descriptions of what we now know of AIDS from Europe and Africa since the early- to mid-1970’s. And there was even a confirmed HIV virus isolated in the blood sample taken from a man in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in 1959.

No reputable researcher has ever suggested what you propose. On the other hand, I have provided dozens of references which conclusively prove that HIV has been a part of the landscape for many decades, long before it was found in the U.S.

As I said, our Comments Policy states that assertions of fact require substantiation. You have provided none. If you have reputable sources to share, we will be happy to post them. Until then, your comments are in moderation.

Jim Burroway adheres to the principles of evidence-based science. He is to be congratulated for this.

One has to locate and present the best evidence available from top-ranked, peer-review journals. That’s the best we have.

Finding that information is not so easy.

Writing about it so enjoyably, as he does, while avoiding narrow disciplinary jargon, is almost miraculous.

Synthesizing some possible future directions–logically- is then the potential whipped cream on the cake.

The alternatives are numerous. How often do we read claims based on a popular magazine article; or someone’s personal musings; or someone’s deductions from s few personal experiences; or a sudden favorite epiphany…and so on.

The scientific and general LGBTQ community owes Jim Burroway an overwhelming debt of gratitude.

Bill Cohen, Publisher
Harrington Park Press

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